A Hanging Offence
by tielan
Summary: Waking up offworld is always a confusing time. But it's worse when you don't remember how you got there in the first place. JohnTeyla


**A Hanging Offence  
**

John woke up with an armful of Teyla.

It might have caused him less concern if not for the fact that he hadn't gone to sleep with her in the first place. In fact, come to think of it, he didn't remember going to sleep last night at all.

He remembered sitting down to dinner with the Pangerii, the way the leader smiled at him in flirtatious mischief. Dinner had flamed spicy on his tongue, but not so spicy he couldn't eat it, and a mouthful of the juice Teyla handed him settled things down.

Sometime between then and now, he'd gone to bed with Teyla.

Although, come to think of it, they weren't actually in a bed...

He instinctively jerked as he realised his butt was hanging in a hammock-cradle of straps, four or five yards off the ground and two or three yards below the leaf canopy. Unfortunately, jerking was bad - it swung the contraption. Only a little bit, but enough to tell John that everything was carefully balanced, and could quite easily become unabalanced.

It was around this time, that he realised it wasn't a question of having _gone to bed_ with Teyla as having been _put to bed_ with Teyla.

Someone - and while John wasn't willing to name names just yet, but he had a few ideas - had fitted them together like two halves of a...a thing that came in two halves and fitted together.

John grimaced to himself and told himself to breathe.

The straps were cradling him and he was cradling Teyla, who seemed to be as much a part of the whole hammock-contraption thing as John.

Which meant that every breath inhaled gained John an olfactory cocktail of fresh leaf, damp earth, and warm woman.

Under other circumstances - namely, consensually and in the full knowledge of how they'd gone to sleep - John would have enjoyed this to the hilt. As it was, the warm curves of her body against his were enthusiastically presenting the benefits of just lying back and waiting for her to wake up normally.

But they were off-world, in an...unusual situation. John had no idea of how they'd come to be here. If they were in danger. How they were going to get out of it.

And if John waited much longer, his body was going to get demanding in ways that would become uncomfortable for both of them - although not necessarily for the same reasons. First thing in the morning wasn't always a comfortable time for a man, particularly if he'd been dreaming about pressing up against a certain set of feminine curves and woken up to those self-same curves actually pressed up against him.

It might have been funny if John didn't consider it so unfair.

He lifted his hands, and then realised there was nowhere to put them, except on Teyla.

The unfairness factor increased by about a thousand.

At least they were still clothed.

If Rodney was responsible for this, he was dead. If Ronon was responsible for this, _he_ was dead. In fact, whoever was responsible for this was dead, any way John looked at it.

And he still had to wake Teyla up.

Unfairness factor times one million.

There was no good way for this to end. John just knew it.

He cleared his throat carefully and took two tries to get his voice working. "Uh, Teyla."

Teyla shifted slightly, positioning herself more comfortably against his shoulder without actually waking up. John gritted his teeth as various parts of her body pushed firmly against him, separated only by a few layers of cloth. And in spite of the best efforts of his mind to think about cold, icky things, another body part began to push firmly against the layers of cloth confining it.

_Oh, God. Not now._

"Teyla!" He tried a little more volume and was rewarded with the sudden stiffening of a woman who'd just realised that where she was and where she'd thought she was were two very different things.

"John?"

She began to push herself up, then momentarily flailed as she realised that they weren't in a bed.

"Whoa!" John's hand landed in the middle of her back, unexpectedly pushing her more firmly against him. They both froze. "Sorry. We're a bit...tied up."

"Yes," she agreed, the rough morning edges of her voice quickly smoothing out as she looked around them. After a moment, during which John tried not to enjoy the panting rise and fall of her chest against him, she ventured, "I do not remember getting into this last night..."

Oh, good, it wasn't just him! "Yeah," he coughed a little. "I think I would have remembered something like thisssss..." The last word trailed into a hiss as Teyla again tried to push herself up, only to discover that the only things against which she had leverage were John and the straps holding them up and binding her in place. There was nothing to push against except each other, and John's body acknowledged that in the most basic way possible.

He shut his eyes very tightly and practised breathing, slow and not-too-deep.

"I am sorry," she murmured, and he could feel the crimson heat of her apology against his neck.

"Not as much as I am," he said, not quite panting with the effort of restraining his body's instinctive response to a woman who was straining against him from chest to groin.

Teyla made a noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a gasp. "I think it will be worse before it gets better," she murmured. "You cannot move at all, and I cannot move without touching you. If we are to get out of this..."

In short, the humiliation hadn't even _begun_.

"Okay," he managed, grinding his teeth together in an effort not to react any more than he already had. "I'll manage." But a groan escaped him as Teyla tried to ease herself off him. Her thighs rubbed briefly either side of his hips as she gripped the straps on either side of his head to try to haul herself up and only succeeded in rubbing against him.

"Sorry," she murmured, and John hoped the hitch in her voice was breathlessness from arousal. At least it would mean that he wasn't the only sufferer in this situation. "It is hard."

"Tell me about it," John muttered.

She began to laugh, her body shaking against his in a way that only made the aching sensation worse. But after a moment, John found his lips curving in a smile. Yeah, it wasn't a situation he'd have picked - and he was going to have a really stern word with whoever had engineered this situation, and if it was either of their team-mates, then they were dead - but even he could see the humour in it. "Take it as a compliment," he murmured, turning his head a little so his jaw rested briefly against her hair.

"I do," Teyla responded, and managed to lift her head enough to look him in the eye. "John, under other circumstances, I would...return the compliment." In the half-light beneath the tree canopy, there were deep cherry undertones to her colouring, and John fought back the urge to rub his jaw against her cheek and just suggest they lay here until Rodney and Ronon came looking for them.

Because the other two _would_ come looking for them, sooner or later.

"I'd like to take a raincheck on that," John admitted, and let one fingertip brush warm against the bare skin of her lower back before carefully resting it back against his hip, "but I don't think it would be a good idea."

One corner of her mouth tilted up in a half-twist. "I believe it would be unwise." Her eyes flickered to the ropes behind his head, and John craned his neck to see what she was looking at. From his perspective, he could only just see the ropes stretching up into the leafy canopy. Teyla's view of it would be better.

"If you are willing to put up with some...discomfort, then I believe I may be able to pull myself up over your head."

"I'm not going anywhere," he pointed out. But when Teyla began wriggling up his body, easing her hips over his, he gritted his teeth together and hoped that he wouldn't be _coming_ everywhere.

John told himself to behave.

It wasn't easy.

He resisted the urge to take a nibble of the tanned throat that pressed against his cheek as Teyla grabbed for the ropes over his head; he didn't lick the inch of skin bare skin that appeared between her top and her trousers as she gripped the ropes and experimentally tugged at them; and he didn't take a bite out of her thigh as she began lifting herself with only the strength of her arms and her shoulders, and her hips and legs rose past his face.

As it turned out, it wouldn't have made a difference if he _had._

Teyla kicked him in the nose.

She must have unbalanced in the swinging cradle of ropes, because one minute there was only the steady rustle of the leaves on the branches holding them up, and the next, her knee met his nose with something that wasn't quite a '_crunch_' but still hurt a _lot._

As deterrents to desire went, it was one of the most effective John had encountered.

Painful, though.

"Ow! Teyla!" They swung dangerously as his hand came up to push her knee away, and the cradle of ropes moved under him. His yelp of pain was followed by a frantic grab for one of the 'up' ropes holding him in place.

The seconds that followed were unnerving for the creak of the bough overhead, the susurrus of the leaves as they settled to a gentle whisper, a handful of birds calling somewhere else in the forest, and the far distant rhythm of voices rising and falling in patterns of speech.

"John?"

"Jus' ged off." He could feel the sluggish drip of blood in his nose as Teyla lifted herself carefully and slowly over John and his aching face. The rope contraption swayed and swung as she lowered herself down, hand over hand, while he pinched the bridge of his nose to stop the flow of blood, trying to find somewhere that didn't make him want to scream.

"John?"

He was pretty sure his nose wasn't broken, although the pain was sharp enough to make him clench his jaw and his eyes were filling with tears. "Yes?"

"I must reach some of the straps beneath you..."

A laugh spluttered out from him. "First you break my nose, now you're feeling me up?" His voice sounded a little thicker and clumsier, even to him.

"Your nose is broken?"

"No." John carefully pulled himself up, leaving his nose to radiate heat like a little volcano in the centre of his face. God, it_hurt_. "Try not to grab anything I can't do without, okay?"

Her giggle shook the hammock, but a moment later, he felt her fingers brush his butt as she gripped the straps beneath him. A soft 'thump' indicated she'd hit the ground. "Do you need help?"

John snorted. "My nose is bleeding, Teyla, not my hands." Still, he let out a groan as he extracted himself from the web of rope and straps, trying not to catch his boots on stray loops of hammock. After lying so long in that position, his muscles were stiff, and blood rushed about nearly-numb parts of him.

He landed on the ground with a wince for the jarring of his sleepy limbs and his nose - a steady, hot pain in the centre of his face.

"Oh, John." Teyla took one look at his blood-streaked face, and looked as though she wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry.

"Worse than it looks," he said, searching his pockets for a kleenex, only to have Teyla fish a packet out of her pocket. Gingerly, John began wiping himself down, carefully staunching the last remnant flow of blood and trying not to hit anything that might make it start again.

"So," he said, beginning to turn his attention to the fact that they were no out of the hammock thingy and able to find out exactly who'd strung them up there - and why, "which direction's the village?"

When they trotted into the village, to the cheers and laughter of the locals, John was mostly cleaned up, thanks to Teyla's kleenex, some wet wipes she'd also tucked into a jacket pocket, and her fingers tracing out the smears of blood he left on his lips and chin.

The Pangerii leader's smile was broad and wicked as she stood up from where Rodney and Ronon were sitting with suspiciously identical smirks on their faces. "Did you sleep well, Teyla? Colonel Sheppard?"

They exchanged a glance.

"Sleep, yes," Teyla said dryly. "Our waking was less graceful."

The woman patted her on the shoulder, grinning broadly. "That is always the case in the hammock. But fun, yes?"

"Oh, I don't know that I'd exactly call it _fun_ when it involved Teyla whacking me in the nose." John gave Teyla a significant glance.

He didn't think he'd ever seen Teyla flush like that before. "It was an accident," she replied.

Ronon looked like he didn't know whether to grin or growl. "What happened?"

"Oh, Teyla stuck her knee in my face while trying to climb off me." John made it sound off-hand.

"I do not suppose you would care to recall the part where it was an_accident_?" Teyla sounded distinctly peevish, and there was a moment when John felt a little guilty for making her feel bad about it. Then his nose started throbbing again and guilt vanished.

"Actually, what I'm trying to recall is the part where our team-mates went looking for us last night, found us, and cut us down..."

"Uh, well, that part never actually happened," Rodney said.

"It didn't, did it?"

"We didn't put you up there!"

Teyla's voice was as cool as John's nose wasn't. "Yet you were aware of it."

"Well, yes, but... Look, by the time we came along, it was already done!" Somehow, Rodney seemed to have been nominated the speaker - probably because Ronon had the sense to keep his mouth shut, while Rodney felt the need to fill the silence.

"You could have brought us down!"

_Now_ Ronon broke into the conversation. "Too dangerous in the dark. You looked pretty snug and they assured us it was stable..."

"Which it was," Rodney added. "Since you're clearly still in one piece..."

"With the exception of my nose," John retorted.

"Is it broken? No? Well, you're still in one piece, then."

Ronon guffawed. John eyed Rodney for a moment, exasperated, while Teyla turned to the Pangerii woman. "Thank you for allowing us to join the celebrations last night."

"You are most welcome. Next time, perhaps you will not sleep in the hammock, but in a proper bed, eh?" From the leering grin on the Pangerii woman's face, John had a feeling that 'a proper bed' was a euphemism for their waking position this morning, only without the clothes.

Heat flushed his cheeks and skipped his heartrate as he contemplated the very attractive prospect of waking up with Teyla straddling him naked, all warm curves and soft skin. John forced himself to concentrate on the exchanges between Teyla and the Pangerii leader.

"...should be returning home." Teyla declined the offers to remain and breakfast with the Pangerii. "Your hospitality is very welcome."

Privately, John thought their hospitality left a lot to be desired, given that he'd spent the night in a swinging hammock of rope and bits. But he managed a smile for the Pangerii leader and her entourage, and ignored the twinkle in her eye as she looked from him to Teyla. "It was...interesting. But we should be going now."

"We've hung about long enough," rumbled Ronon and shrugged at the glare his team-mates gave him as they moved away and began leaving the village. "We have!"

"You mean _we_ have," John retorted, indicating Teyla and himself. The pain in his nose was beginning to subside, although it was still throbbing noticeably.

"That, too." Ronon was unrepentant. "If you like hammocks, we could string one up for you guys in Atlantis."

"Ronon."

"Actually," said Rodney in airy tones, "I'm rather curious to know exactly what Teyla was doing given that her thighs were alongside Sheppard's nose--"

"Continue in this manner and I will be happy to string _you_ up, Rodney." Teyla's syrupy voice hardened like crack toffee. "By your balls."

Her reaction was both amusing and depressing.

"I suggest you change the topic, Rodney."

Rodney deflated. "Right. Changing topic. So, how about that spice last night?"

When Teyla drew alongside John, though, she looked as though she wished to laugh but thought it might be inappropriate. "Does it hurt much?"

"Just a low throbbing now."

"I am sorry."

"Well, next time we wake up together, I'll kick you in the nose and we'll call it even, okay?" He spoke jokingly, trying to make light of the morning.

"If there _is_ another morning when we wake up together," Teyla said decidedly, "I will not be going _anywhere_."

John stared at the dark pink undertones that flooded the bronze tint of her skin and felt his ears go hot. "Really?"

She didn't meet his eye, but tossed her head. "Yes."

He grinned.

They walked back to the 'jumper, side by side, their knuckles barely brushing in the morning light.

- **fin** -


End file.
